Thursday, August 20, 2015

GREAT THINKING TO GET GREAT STUDENTS

As
most people know, I am a full-time faculty member here at the University of
Richmond. Over the summer, Dr. Ronald
Crutcher was named the 10th president of our University. I was at one of the opening ceremonies for
the fall semester this morning.
President Crutcher spoke and was kind enough to mention this teaching
blog. He said that he had been reading
it since he was appointed to the position of president. So, I want to wish President Crutcher a true
welcome to the University of Richmond.
No matter how good you think we are, your job is to make us better. Make it happen.

**

I
was at a conference in Chicago last week and was part of two panel presentations
on teaching. In such wide ranging discussions,
I inevitably talk about quite a number of ways to become a better teacher over
the course of the next academic year.
Not surprisingly, I tend to give a variety of answers to questions depending
on the direction of the conversation.

But
one of those questions has been on my mind since last week. One person asked: What is the most important piece of advice you
can give to a college professor who wants to become a better teacher?

That
is a serious and very interesting question.
What is my most important piece of advice? I feel like I should take a survey and
analyze the answers that I receive. In
truth, I am not sure what answer I gave in Chicago. On a panel, you tend to throw out answers
without adequate thought. Here’s the
answer I would give now, after some consideration.

A
person once emailed me “Great teaching does not come from years of doing
it. Great teaching comes from thinking
about it.” For example: If you were the coach of a great college
football team and had a chance to win a national championship, you would
probably think about nothing else between July and January. You would be obsessive. You would eat, drink, and sleep football. In your mind, you would break the team apart
and consider each component and how to get improvement. And, heck, the coach is just getting the
team ready for a game. Although football receives tons of attention, it really is just a game. Unless you are related to a player or have a
bet on the game, it really has no impact on anyone. But
the coach would think about little else for all those months. Victory would be so important that the thinking would be natural.

In
comparison, how much time have you spent thinking about your teaching over the summer? How much have you talked with other teachers
over these weeks and months? How much
will you think about your teaching over the coming weeks? If the answer to these questions is “very little,” then you are
probably aligned with a majority of teachers.
But that is never going to get you to greatness. It is hard to improve without sacrificing time for a lot of thinking. If you want to get better at anything, you
need to invest a serious level of thought.

Thus, here is my answer. My
“most important piece of advice for great teaching” would be the
following. Very much like a
championship football coach analyzing the team, break apart your teaching process into its smallest
component parts. You can probably come
up with 10-20 “parts” if you try:
testing philosophy, homework assignments, structure of class, how much
you will lecture, office hours, methods of communications, writing assignments,
grading policies, attendance, getting students to be engaged in the class, and
the like. There are a lot of bits and
pieces that make up “teaching.”

Then,
pick 2-3 of these pieces that you want to focus on during the upcoming semester
and think about those 2-3 in every possible way that you can. Don't spend minutes; spend hours. How could you do each of them differently
and how could that make your teaching more effective and efficient? There
are always alternatives. What are they?

I
believe it is difficult to improve “teaching.”
The topic is simply too broad.
On the other hand, I think everyone can select a couple of components of
teaching and come up with serious improvements. But only if you are willing to do some
serious thinking about those parts. You
cannot fix the car. You can only fix
pieces of the car. For the next
semester, pick the pieces of teaching that you want to think about (possibly
obsessively but not necessarily) and see what improvements you can
uncover. Then, the next semester, pick
a couple of different components to think about and do it again. I believe you will be amazed by how quickly
your teaching begins to improve.

Once
you pick what you what to think about find some colleagues who enjoy teaching
and sit around and talk about these things.
We are all in this together. We
should be helping each other. It is
shocking how little some of us talk to each other about teaching.

So, what have I been thinking about this summer?

My students
often do not seem to have a real understanding of what it means to be great
students. They tend to have their own way
of approaching a class and, whether they seem to be getting an A or an F, they
faithfully stick with that approach.

This
summer I have been thinking about the question: How do I get my students to become better
students? If I can get improvement,
they will be better for me but also better for all of their other teachers.

I
want them to walk into my first class (next Monday) having spent time
considering what it means to be a great student. They are all smart enough to do well in my
class if they will just make the smart decisions that seem to come so naturally
to great students. Over the summer, I have sent them
several emails on this topic (I will talk more about this experiment
at a later date). Here, I want to talk
about one particular experiment.

One
of my beliefs is that poorer students tend to procrastinate and then have to
rush around at the last minute to complete assignments and often have poor
results. Without sufficient time, nothing ever goes well. I believe great students tend
to procrastinate less so that they have adequate time for excellent work. Think think think – how can I reduce
procrastination.

I
wanted to influence my students so I sent them the following email about two
week ago.

Notice
here that I am trying to make several points that will encourage immediate
action and less procrastination:

--This
material is important because it is relevant to the world around us and to what we are going to cover in class.

--Knowledge
is not just something school students accumulate for a test. It is a big help to successful business
people who can make immediate use of it.

--There
is a big difference between wanting to make an A and wanting to be successful
in the business world. I don’t think
enough students ever make this distinction.
It is an important because this
distinction impacts how a student approaches the learning process.

--Students
often don’t realize what they really want.
I am trying to help them see through all their talk to determine their true goals. “If you put the work off until the test gets
close, you don’t want knowledge. You
want a grade.” I think self-awareness
is helpful. After you have self-awareness, then you are in a better position to make improvements.

**

Here’s
the email I sent:

“It
is amazing to me how often I will read something in the newspaper about
a topic that we will be covering in Intermediate Accounting II (Accounting 302). I am always reminded that if you are going
to be successful in the world of business you have to know what is going on.

“Attached
is an article from the Wall Street Journal a few days back about sales
leaseback arrangements. You will see this article again in class because we are going to be talking about these
arrangements (probably around October 15).

“If
your response is: ‘I want to make an
A. I'll read this article when it gets
close to when I must know it for class’ then you are probably going to be a
very good college student. If your
response is: ‘I want to be a successful
business person so I am dying to read it right now’ then you are probably going
to be a successful business person.
Success is more than simply working for a grade.

”From
my experience, it is important to know which one of those goals is YOU. My experience is that half of the students
in 302 want to be great students and half want to be successful business
people. Don't fool yourself. You are adults now. It is important, I think, for you to know
what your real goals are.”

**

Will
this help my students become more aware of how a great student approaches
material in order to become a successful business person? I think it can help some. And, if I make similar points during
the semester, by the end of the course, I am hoping that I have helped all of
them not just to learn accounting but also to learn what it means to be a great
student, one who will graduate and go out into the real world and achieve true
success. If I can help them get rid of procrastination,
a big step has been taken toward making them great students.

Well,
that is what I have been thinking about over the summer. What have your thought about? What epiphanies have you come up with about
your teaching?